Transcription of Thoughts Are Things
1 Thoughts Are Things By Prentice Mulford Version 5/29/2010 This book is a free book brought to you by Christopher Westra. You may freely share it with anyone. In fact, we hope you do! The original (or latest update) can be obtained from this website ( ). You can just click on the link below: Thoughts Are Things , by Prentice Mulford Additional Resources (just click on links) Discover the Eight Most Powerful NLP Techniques Ever Revealed in the Ultimate NLP Course. Download Your Copy of The New Revised and Updated Version of As A Man Thinketh, by James Allen. Learn the Difference Between a Rut and a Groove with Christopher s 47 Secrets of Success.
2 You ll Also Learn How to Set Goals for Your Life. | brought to you by Christopher Westra Page 1 Table of Contents Chapter 2 Who Are Our Relations?.. 17 Chapter 1 - The Material Mind vs. The Spiritual Chapter 3 thought 36 Chapter 4 One Way to Cultivate 53 Chapter 5 Look 68 Chapter 6 The Infinite Mind of 84 Chapter 7 Some Laws on Health and 98 Chapter 8 Museum and Menagerie of Chapter 9 The God In Chapter 10 The Healing and Renewing Force of Chapter 11 Immortality in the Chapter 12 The Attraction of Chapter 13 The Accession of New Additional | brought to you by Christopher Westra Page 2 Introduction Readers who are interested in an author's writings naturally like to know the main facts of his life.
3 So it may be briefly stated here that Prentice Mulford was born at Long Island, , in 1834, and died in 1891. After a life, not without some adventures, during which he was engaged in such varied pursuits as mining, school- teaching, and finally journalism, he retired from work with a scanty fortune. Five years afterwards he passed peacefully away without apparent illness or pain, having just started on a cruise alone in his canoe. It was during these five years, that he concentrated his attention on the Spiritual Laws, and published his Thoughts about them. To many these Thoughts may seem dreams; to others they are priceless truths.
4 To criticize his ideas and assertions is not our wish here, though it would not be difficult to point out discrepancies and inconsistences that, however, do not affect the value of his general teaching. That he is a wise teacher and no dogmatist is apparent from his own words: "In the spiritual life every person is his or her own discoverer, and you need not grieve if your discoveries are not believed by others. It is not your business to push on, find more and increase individual happiness." To him, any rate, is due the credit of having been a pioneer in the thought which is now influencing people throughout the world, and his influence is very apparent in the writings of all teachers of the same school who followed him.
5 | brought to you by Christopher Westra Page 3 Chapter 1 - The Material Mind vs. The Spiritual Mind THERE belongs to every human being a higher self and a lower self--a self or mind of the spirit which has been growing for ages, and a self of the body, which is but a thing of yesterday. The higher self is full of prompting idea, suggestion and aspiration. This it receives of the Supreme Power. All this the lower or animal self regards as wild and visionary. The higher self argues possibilities and power for us greater than men and women now possess and enjoy. The lower self says we can only live and exist as men and women have lived and existed before us.
6 The higher self craves freedom from the cumbrousness, the limitations, the pains and disabilities of the body. The lower self says that we are born to them, born to ill, born to suffer, and must suffer as have so many before us. The higher self wants a standard for right and wrong of its own. The lower self says we must accept a standard made for us by others--by general and long-held opinion, belief and prejudice. "To thine own self be true" is an oft-uttered adage. But to which self? The higher or lower? You have in a sense two minds--the mind of the body and the mind of the spirit. Spirit is a force and a mystery.
7 All we know or may ever know of it is that it exists, and is ever working and producing all results in physical Things seen of physical sense and many more not so seen. | brought to you by Christopher Westra Page 4 What is seen, of any object, a tree, an animal, a stone, a man is only a part of that tree, animal, stone, or man. There is a force that for a time binds such objects together in the form you see them. That force is always acting on them to greater or lesser degree. It builds up the flower to its fullest maturity. Its cessation to act on the flower or tree causes what we call decay.
8 It is constantly changing the shape of all forms of what are called organized matter. An animal, a plant, a human being are not in physical shape this month or this year what they will be next month or next year. This ever-acting, ever-varying force, which lies behind and, in a sense, creates all forms of matter we call Spirit. To see, reason and judge of life and Things in the knowledge of this force makes what is termed the "Spiritual Mind." We have through knowledge the wonderful power of using or directing this force, when we recognize it, and know that it exists so as to bring us health, happiness and eternal peace of mind.
9 Composed as we are of this force, we are ever attracting more of it to us and making it a part of our being. With more of this force must come more and more knowledge. | brought to you by Christopher Westra Page 5 At first in our physical existences we allow it to work blindly. Then we are in the ignorance of that condition known as the material mind. But as mind through its growth or increase of this power becomes more and more awakened, it asks: "Why comes so much of pain, grief and disappointment in the physical life?" "Why do we seem born to suffer and decay" That question is the first awakening cry of the spiritual mind, and an earnest question or demand for knowledge must in time be answered.
10 The material mind is a part of yourself, which has been appropriated by the body and educated by the body. It is as if you taught a child that the wheels of a steamboat made the boat move, and said nothing of the steam, which gives the real power. Bred in such ignorance, the child, should the wheels stop moving, would look no farther for the cause of their stoppage than to try to find where to repair them, very much as now so many depend entirely on repair of the physical body to ensure its healthy, vigorous movement, never dreaming that the imperfection lies in the real motive power--the mind.
